Registration required at: mek@smb.spk-berlin.de

More than thirty years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the East-West divide remains significant, but one can no longer claim that it constitutes the major cleavage in European identity. The great recession and the sovereign debt crises in the early 2010s showed that divisions between North and South have become at least equally important.
Europe’s status as a destination of transnational migration reminds us that the geographical markers North-South and East-West not only stand for meaningful differences and divisions within Europe, but also point towards Europe’s role in producing global inequalities whose historical legacies stretch back to the ages of European colonialism and imperialism.
This seminar offers a nuanced approach to the question of European identity. Through an interdisciplinary panel discussion and Q&A, we intend to stimulate thinking on how issues of class, gender, race and ethnicity, but also differences in ideological, religious and ethical outlooks, come to complicate standard accounts of European diversity. Rethinking European identity requires us to take these differences seriously, as a precondition for engaging in the challenging and yet necessary political task of treating them fairly.

Opening:
Elisabeth Tietmeyer, Director of the Museum Europäischer Kulturen – Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (SPK) and
Kaius Tuori, EuroStorie, University of Helsinki

Moderator: Reetta Toivanen, EuroStorie, University of Helsinki

Keynote: Sebastian Conrad, Free University Berlin: “European history after the global turn”

Panel discussion: Sebastian Conrad, Free University Berlin; Ana Ivasiuc, Maynooth University, Ireland; Marta Bucholc, University of Warsaw; Ville Erkkilä, EuroStorie, University of Helsinki